366 MENTAL FUNCTIONS OF 



his organ or scat;" of "phantasie or imagination, which some 

 call estimative or cogitative" "his organ is the middle cell of the 



one of his Majesty's Councillors in Ireland. London, 1835. An equally able 

 and very learned exposure of the innumerable literary errors of this unfortunate 

 book is contained in a work which must delight every man of education, and 

 from which I have gained much information, Natural Theology considered with 

 Reference to Lord Brougham's Discourse on that Subject ; by Thomas Turton, 

 D. D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, and Dean 

 of Peterborough. Cambridge, 1836. The Creator is a distinct being, to whom 

 there is nothing " simile aut secundum," whose essence is incommunicable ; 

 and no created being has His attributes, though we speak of the Divine Mind. 

 He is every where has always existed will always exist and orders and 

 sustains all things. His nature is past finding out ; and, therefore, to attempt to 

 conceive His nature, or to speak of Him except as speaking of His works and 

 laws, is vain and to think the highest created beings even approach His nature 

 is absurd. In the words of Mr. Carmichael, " There is no spirit in the uni- 

 verse but His incommunicable essence." 



If Lord Brougham is deeply in error when he calls, as he does, the insensible 

 change of particles during life " an entire destruction of the body," " the body's 

 death " and " dissolution," though organisation and life have not experienced the 

 intermission of a moment, he is equally wrong when he derives a proof of the 

 existence of something immaterial from the invariableness of our consciousness of 

 identity. Not only does our memory often fail us, so that we cannot say whether 

 we did or said certain things which others know was the fact ; not only are we 

 continually deceived in dreams, as having said and done what never was the fact, 

 so that, as Mr. Wallace remarks, we frequently exclaim, " Did I really do so and 

 so, or did I only dream it ?" but insane people daily believe themselves to be others ; 

 and, after violent affections of the brain, people not unfrequently forget who they 

 are, and believe themselves to be other persons. (See Gall, 1. c. 8vo. t. iii. p. 122. 

 sqq.) Nay, cases occur in which a man has the consciousness of two persons. As 

 the brain, like all other organs of animal life, is double, and the operations of the 

 two halves of the brain proceed like one, just as the double impressions on the eyes 

 and ears are known only as one, so one side of the brain is sometimes diseased or 

 injured to even a great amount, without impairment of the mind. But if their 

 action is rendered discordant not the action of one arrested, but thrown out of 

 harmony with the other or if they act alternately, we have the phenomena of 

 two states of consciousness. " One of Gall's friends, a physician," says Dr. 

 Spurzheim, " often complained that he could not think with the left side of his 

 head ; the right side was one inch higher than the left. Gall attended a gentleman 

 who for three years heard peasants insulting him on his left side. He commonly 

 discerned his derangement, and rectified his error ; but if he took a little too much 

 wine, or had a fit of fever, he always imagined there were voices abusing him. 

 Tiedemann mentions a certain Moor who was alienated on one side of his brain, 

 and observed his madness with the other. 



" All monomaniacs have a complicated consciousnees. I saw in Dublin a 

 lunatic who fancied himself the Duke of Wellington. He thought to have com- 



